The best of the New York Times’ Anthony Weiner profile

The New York Times Magazine is out with an exhaustive profile of former Rep. Anthony Weiner and his wife, longtime Hillary Clinton aide Huma Abedin. Both talk about their marriage, their future and of course, the scandal that drove Weiner from office two years ago. Read it all -- but in case you won't here's what you should know.

Former New York Rep. Anthony Weiner

He's thinking about running for mayor:

“I don’t have this burning, overriding desire to go out and run for office,” he said. “It’s not the single animating force in my life as it was for quite some time. But I do recognize, to some degree, it’s now or maybe never for me, in terms of running for something."

He's changed:

Even before the Twitter scandal broke, Weiner was disliked by many in his own party for his pugnacious, attention-grabbing style. There's a new Weiner now, he says. “I don’t remember some of the skill to, like, be that guy,” he told the magazine. His brother Jason suggests that's a good thing: “I wouldn’t stand for other people saying this about him, but there was definitely a douchiness about him that I just don’t really see anymore.”

His wife has forgiven him:

“There was a deep love there, but it was coupled with a tremendous feeling of betrayal," Abedin said. "It took a lot of work, both mentally and in the way we engage with each other, for me to get to a place where I said: ‘O.K., I’m in. I’m staying in this marriage.’" Weiner adds, "She’s given me another chance. And I am very grateful for that. And I’m trying to make sure I get it right.”

She didn't want to date him at first:

When Weiner first asked Abedin out, back in 2001, he says she went to the bathroom and never came back. A group of her friends approached the table and told him, "Stay away. She wants no part of you." (Abedin says she did come back, and he was gone). The Clinton aide frequently stood on the sidelines while Weiner introduced her boss, then a senator, at events. Her estimation: "I would think, My God, he’s such a jerk.” They didn't hit it off until six years later, during the 2008 presidential primary.

Hillary Clinton helped Abedin through the scandal:

“We’ve had a lot of personal conversations, none of which I feel comfortable talking about. But what I will say about [Hillary Clinton], and for that matter her entire family, the unconditional love and support they have given me has been a real gift," Abedin says.

He's in therapy:

“Not a lot of gratuitous hugging in our family. My father’s expression of love was entirely through solving problems for us" [...] Weiner said. “This fix of having an emotional back and forth on the Internet at 2 a.m. seemed, to me, like getting something that I didn’t really have a lot of, and it was easy and it never really got in. It bounced off.”

Jon Stewart had some advice:

Stewart, "a friend of Weiner’s since the late ’80s," called the congressman after the scandal broke.

“We create a two-dimensional effigy of an individual and just kind of burn it in the town square and then walk away,” Stewart says. “As someone who is part of the process that does that to people, when I talked to him, it was more from that perspective than anything else, to say: ‘As low as you are, please understand that what’s happening to you right now isn’t really happening to you, it’s happening to whatever caricature we’ve all created of you. You have your own responsibility in this, but it’s not to us. I know it’s hard to separate yourself from that, but I hope you can at some level.’ ”

The "Daily Show" host actually apologized himself in the midst of the scandal, to viewers who thought he went too easy on Weiner.